68 replies to this topic

[Davers]

Rebas Kradd, on 14 March 2014 - 09:26 AM, said:

As meritorious as this idea is, it won't be implemented. It's too many sweeping changes and programming demands.

Well all these threads are just a mental exercise about 'building a better mouse trap'. But it is always fun to speculate.

[Fut]

Davers, on 14 March 2014 - 10:10 AM, said:

Well all these threads are just a mental exercise about 'building a better mouse trap'. But it is always fun to speculate.

Agreed.
I don't ever think we'll see a robust heat system in MWO... Sometimes I weep myself to sleep at night because of this.
But it is fun to imagine what the game would be like with some of the suggested changes.

[Davers]

Fut, on 14 March 2014 - 10:16 AM, said:

Agreed.
I don't ever think we'll see a robust heat system in MWO... Sometimes I weep myself to sleep at night because of this.
But it is fun to imagine what the game would be like with some of the suggested changes.

Honestly I would rather they had created a game that FELT like BT rather than shoehorn 30 year old mechanics into a computer game.

[Mechteric]

I don't like the poll options at all, they're too wordy really.

Ghost heat definitely needs to go, no question.

After that they can then adjust things like heat capacity, heat dissipation, and individual weapon heat to bring proper balance to the game.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

@ OP

This system is far too robust and conceptually sound for Paul. Simply put, it makes too much sense.


It will never happen.

Edited by mwhighlander, 14 March 2014 - 11:08 AM.

[Alex Warden]

how do you recognize a bad poll? there is no plain and simple "no" option

[no one]

CapperDeluxe, on 14 March 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

I don't like the poll options at all, they're too wordy really.

I am bad at making polls I've taken out some noise in the polls and. . .

Alex Warden, on 14 March 2014 - 05:04 PM, said:

how do you recognize a bad poll? there is no plain and simple "no" option

Added a 'no' option for you. Technically the second choice is also 'no', it's just in the form of a quote from "Ghost Buster's".

Anyway, I've updated the OP and the spreadsheet with some of everyone's ideas and a sprinkling of the cut poll results. I have a sneaking suspicion I've forgotten to add something, so I'll probably keep tweaking and revisiting it. If anyone has any opinions on it I'd love to hear them.

Thanks to everyone that's commented so far!

Edited by no one, 16 March 2014 - 12:22 PM.

[Reitrix]

BlackhawkSC, on 13 March 2014 - 11:41 AM, said:

Ghost heat is supposed to counter alpha strikes as others have already mentioned. What's promoting alpha strikes is map designs that provide tons of cover. ALL maps on MWO right now provide cover everywhere. Indestructible buildings, random rocks and environmental objects that are bigger than mechs. Real battlefields don't look like this all the time. The map design also screws up how LRMs are used in MWO vs in the BT universe. In BT, LRMs are supposed to be long range weapons. In practice, MWO LRMs are medium range weapons with a 300m-400m effective range.

You don't need a fix to ghost heat, you need fixes to the maps. Imagine you have a Arena style map with minimal cover and also imagine there's no ghost heat. Who would really want to bring a quad PPC Stalker to that battle?

I would. Because then i could fire off 40 damage pinpoint alphas 4 times in a row before even thinking about heat problems. I'd core most 'mechs before they had a chance to get out of the way.

Is that what you want?

[Moromillas]

No thanks, I'd rather not go back to a boating for enormous pinpoint alpha damage meta.

[no one]

Moromillas, on 15 March 2014 - 01:44 AM, said:

No thanks, I'd rather not go back to a boating for enormous pinpoint alpha damage meta.

It's actually worth reading the OP, looking at the spreadsheet and reading some of the suggestions and comments from other posters.

The system I proposed penalizes alpha striking heavy energy weapons far more than the current system. Firing four PPCs at once, for example, spikes you into high 'overheat' doing severe damage to your pilot, increasing your cool-down and crippling your mobility. It also rewards waiting and staggering your shots for better efficiency, rather than using an arbitrary re-fire delay. Ghost heat and the current heat system does next to nothing to prevent you from boating, and nothing at all to discourage alpha-strikes.

Edited by no one, 15 March 2014 - 02:04 AM.

[Reitrix]

no one, on 15 March 2014 - 02:03 AM, said:

It's actually worth reading the OP, looking at the spreadsheet and reading some of the suggestions and comments from other posters.

The system I proposed penalizes alpha striking heavy energy weapons far more than the current system. Firing four PPCs at once, for example, spikes you into high 'overheat' doing severe damage to your pilot, increasing your cool-down and crippling your mobility. It also rewards waiting and staggering your shots for better efficiency, rather than using an arbitrary re-fire delay. Ghost heat and the current heat system does next to nothing to prevent you from boating, and nothing at all to discourage alpha-strikes.

if you disallow me to alpha my quad ppc stalker, then ill chain them like i do right now. Except under your system, i'd effectively have cooldown free AC10s with infinite ammo, as my build carries 19 DHS. Congrats, you turned me into a turret able to kill just about any 'Mech face to face in a couple of seconds.

[no one]

Reitrix, on 15 March 2014 - 02:16 AM, said:

if you disallow me to alpha my quad ppc stalker, then ill chain them like i do right now. Except under your system, i'd effectively have cooldown free AC10s with infinite ammo, as my build carries 19 DHS. Congrats, you turned me into a turret able to kill just about any 'Mech face to face in a couple of seconds.

19 DHS gives you a buffer of 13, dissipation before overheat is 5.25 heat per second with the 150% efficiency increase. If you wait the full 1.9 seconds to cool down between shots, then yes you can chain fire those PPCs to your heart's content. Of course 4*1.9 = 7.6 seconds, so if you wanted to get full DPS out of those by chain firing faster you'd be pushing into overheat. Say you stagger fire them with perfect timing, one second between each. Each subsequent shot will have 5 residual heat, meaning by the third shot, you spike to 20 heat. You now have a cooling dissipation penalty. Fourth shot, you're at 26 heat and have a slight movement penalty. Fifth shot you're at 32 heat, and have a shutdown risk. Sixth shot, your pilot's taking damage, potentially blacking out and anything faster than an atlas is outflanking you.

So no, even with 150% current base heat efficiency and 29 DHS you'd be achieving sub-optimal d.p.s. with 4 ppcs, be required to stagger your shots, and be unable to alpha strike.

In the current system that stalker can fire 7 times before overheating, or four times with two PPCs, and the only thing it has to worry about is shutting down.

Edited by no one, 15 March 2014 - 03:00 AM.

[Reitrix]

no one, on 15 March 2014 - 02:48 AM, said:

19 DHS gives you a buffer of 13, dissipation before overheat is 5.25 heat per second with the 150% efficiency increase. If you wait the full 1.9 seconds to cool down between shots, then yes you can chain fire those PPCs to your heart's content. Of course 4*1.9 = 7.6 seconds, so if you wanted to get full DPS out of those by chain firing faster you'd be pushing into overheat. Say you stagger fire them with perfect timing, one second between each. Each subsequent shot will have 5 residual heat, meaning by the third shot, you spike to 20 heat. You now have a cooling dissipation penalty. Fourth shot, you're at 26 heat and have a slight movement penalty. Fifth shot you're at 32 heat, and have a shutdown risk. Sixth shot, your pilot's taking damage, potentially blacking out and anything faster than an atlas is outflanking you.

So no, even with 150% current base heat efficiency and 29 DHS you'd be achieving sub-optimal d.p.s. with 4 ppcs, be required to stagger your shots, and be unable to alpha strike.

In the current system that stalker can fire 7 times before overheating, or four times with two PPCs, and the only thing it has to worry about is shutting down.

Actually, Properly staggering my shots allows me to continuously fire 12 shots (10 on Terra Therma) before i reach 95% of my heat bar, and then i can fire a 13th shot 2.5 seconds after reaching that mark.

I can just about core an Atlas in one salvo. In the current system.
Tweaks to limit firing rates and heat thresholds would cause a requisite scaling back of the doubled armor values.

And your system unduly punishes the Awesome with its 3 PPC stock loadout.

Edited by Reitrix, 15 March 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[no one]

Reitrix, on 15 March 2014 - 03:12 AM, said:

Actually, Properly staggering my shots allows me to continuously fire 12 shots (10 on Terra Therma) before i reach 95% of my heat bar, and then i can fire a 13th shot 2.5 seconds after reaching that mark.

Ah whoops. I wasn't taking into account pilot skills I guess?

Reitrix, on 15 March 2014 - 03:12 AM, said:

And your system unduly punishes the Awesome with its 3 PPC stock loadout.

Actually? It wouldn't be all that bad. You knock a PPC off that earlier example with 19 DHS and you can chain fire every 1.3 seconds before pilot skills for about 3 heat buildup each shot. You could even alpha strike with just three PPC, at a slight risk of shutting down, a temporary mobility drop and a six second cool down.

Edited by no one, 15 March 2014 - 03:33 AM.

[Reitrix]

no one, on 15 March 2014 - 03:31 AM, said:

Ah whoops. I wasn't taking into account pilot skills I guess?



Actually? It wouldn't be all that bad. You knock a PPC off that earlier example with 19 DHS and you can chain fire every 1.3 seconds before pilot skills for about 3 heat buildup each shot. You could even alpha strike with just three PPC, at a slight risk of shutting down, a temporary mobility drop and a six second cool down.

The problem is that you're punishing heavy energy weapons specifically. Since the Awesome relies principally on those heavier energy systems, it gets hit rather hard on your heat scale.
Low heat ballistics would reign supreme. Just like we get now. Heat isn't the issue we have, its the ability to bring 4 large weapons to bear on a single pixel instantaneously.

I agree that we need some penalties for running hot. But these shouldn't be fatal or damaging if you haven't reached a shutdown mark.

[Moromillas]

no one, on 15 March 2014 - 02:03 AM, said:

It's actually worth reading the OP, looking at the spreadsheet and reading some of the suggestions and comments from other posters.

The system I proposed penalizes alpha striking heavy energy weapons far more than the current system. Firing four PPCs at once, for example, spikes you into high 'overheat' doing severe damage to your pilot, increasing your cool-down and crippling your mobility. It also rewards waiting and staggering your shots for better efficiency, rather than using an arbitrary re-fire delay. Ghost heat and the current heat system does next to nothing to prevent you from boating, and nothing at all to discourage alpha-strikes.

No, removing ghost heat and applying the same penalties to each weapon will go back to the high damage alpha boat meta. It's also much more convoluted that what we have now.

Prevent boating? There's nothing wrong with boating, it has always been part of the lore. Why would you want to discourage alpha strikes?

[no one]

Moromillas, on 15 March 2014 - 01:44 AM, said:

No thanks, I'd rather not go back to a boating for enormous pinpoint alpha damage meta.

Moromillas, on 15 March 2014 - 04:14 AM, said:

Prevent boating? There's nothing wrong with boating, it has always been part of the lore. Why would you want to discourage alpha strikes?

You are correct, there's nothing inherently wrong with 'boating' multiple weapons of the same type. What I was responding to, was your very valid point about the 'high damage alpha boat' meta. I thought it was clear that was my implication since I was replying directly to your above post.

Let me be clear -

The system in no way inherently penalizes you for your weapon selection (as does ghost heat), nor does it punish energy weapons. It is, in fact, helping energy weapons in the sense that it allows us to raise global heat dissipation rates without opening the floodgates to the alpha-boat meta.

The only thing this system discourages is raising your heat too much, too quickly, as when alpha striking lots of high heat weapons or continuously using weapons with a higher heat-per-second than you can dissipate. It encourages actual judicious chain firing, because you can reach a higher DPS at the expense of pinpoint damage focus by increasing the interval between shots to stay below the threshold of overheat.

Also, while I understand this looks complicated at first glance it is, in fact, a lot more straight forward and transparent than ghost heat. There is no sudden inexplicable extra heat, ever. In practice, the only things people would need to understand are -

• More overheat means slower cool-down.
  
• At high enough heat levels my 'Mech slows down.
  
• I can shut down if I overheat too long.
  
• Extreme overheat hurts my pilot.
  
• If I'm way too hot my ammo can explode.

The reason most of the guts of those numbers are there is so people can follow how I achieved them, and tweak the numbers on their own to see how the system responds with a different cooling rate for heat sinks, or more heat-sinks or a different dissipation penalty. I set it up that way so people can give me feedback on the system. If someone thinks it works especially poorly in certain circumstances, or works better if some value changes, they can point it out.

Reitrix, on 15 March 2014 - 04:10 AM, said:

I agree that we need some penalties for running hot. But these shouldn't be fatal or damaging if you haven't reached a shutdown mark.

For perspective, I currently have the time-to-kill for pilots suffering from extreme overheat scaling logarithmically from 2.8 minutes at 70% overheat, to 21.5 seconds at 100% overheat, to 6.25 seconds at 130% overheat. You'd have to be considerably alpha-happy or be pushing your heat hard for a long time to kill your pilot, especially since you have a good chance of shutting down at those levels of overheat.

. . . But all of these values are just my suggestions. If different values would work better, do please post them.

Edited by no one, 15 March 2014 - 10:03 AM.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

We are playing battletech game right? We need battletech heat scale then. Not this lazy bull shit that PGI is serving us. Enough to say.
And the aplha striking is not the main reason why we need the "real" heat system, thare are others ideas to prevent that, fixed convergence or my favorite targetting computers.


Dont even start with "too much coding" argue. Playing around with numbers in xml file and making two bars, green and red one is no more then a day of work i would sey,

Edited by Jaeger Gonzo, 16 March 2014 - 11:45 PM.

[The Basilisk]

I don't like ghost heat very much but it was the shortest easyest way to take some speed out of the Game.
High alpha meta was the factor that ruined MW4 online and it will ruine MWO for me if this will come again.
Its bad enough as it is with dual AC20 and Longrange AC/PPC light boats running around.

[Mechteric]

The Basilisk, on 17 March 2014 - 02:10 AM, said:

I don't like ghost heat very much but it was the shortest easyest way to take some speed out of the Game.
High alpha meta was the factor that ruined MW4 online and it will ruine MWO for me if this will come again.
Its bad enough as it is with dual AC20 and Longrange AC/PPC light boats running around.

It didn't go go away, it just shifted it from 4 PPCs to 2 PPCs with AC's. Same damage output more or less, but less heat and restricted mostly to builds that have jump jets.